A Florida judge called both Apple and Google's Motorola Mobility out in court, saying that neither of them really wants to resolve these patent matters.

U.S. District Judge Robert Scola -- a federal judge in Miami, Florida -- said that Apple and Motorola Mobility are wasting the court's time with patent infringement lawsuits that they have no intention of solving.

“The parties have no interest in efficiently and expeditiously resolving this dispute; they instead are using this and similar litigation worldwide as a business strategy that appears to have no end,” said Judge Scola. “That is not a proper use of this court.”

Judge Scola's main issue is that Apple and Motorola Mobility currently have over 180 claims regarding 12 patents and are arguing over the meaning of over 100 terms.

“Without a hint of irony, the parties now ask the court to mop up a mess they made by holding a hearing to reduce the size and complexity of the case,” wrote Judge Scola. “The court declines this invitation.”

The court has given Apple and Motorola Mobility four months to narrow the case down, and if they fail to do so, the case will be put on hold until all disputes over terms are resolved.

Apple and Motorola Mobility have been tossing patent infringement lawsuits around since 2010. Many see these cases as a way of struggling for market share and pushing the competitor's products out rather than attempting to solve real issues.

This endless, semantic and ultimately desperate obsession with trying to prove that Apple is or is not innovative completely misses the point. Let's leave the loaded word 'innovative' to one side, as it is clearly a word liable to produce a hissy fit when used in relation to Apple, and instead think about real world technology markets, products, mutations and disruption. The question to ask is what products in any given market were clearly, in hind sight, disruptive, that is products that not only were very successful but ones that changed the market and changed the products in that market to such an extent that one can say that they caused a paradigm shift. Products that caused something new, and something big, to happen.

Looking back, and this is just a a few examples, I can think of a few. Windows was one such product, even though it was built on the back of Mac OS, it was Windows that changed the industry. Netscape and Google search are another couple of products that changed everything in their domain. None of these game changing products came out of the blue, all such products build on what went before, but all such paradigm shifting products rearrange what went before, assemble previously separate components, re-engineer things, to such an extent and in such novel ways that an explosive mutation takes place that ripples out astonishingly rapidly and changes everything that it touches and to which it is related.

What such game changing products have we seen in the 21st century? Facebook I think probably counts as one but what's relevant to the discussion here is that one company has come up with three such mutations in just a decade, and that is of course Apple. They were in chronological order:

iPod and iTunes (which were really a single product) which transformed the music industry.

iPhone and the App Store, which changed both the phone industry and the software industry.

iPad, which created a new global tablet market and which is profoundly changing the PC industry as well as transforming publishing, gaming and education.

So whether one uses the word 'innovation' or not in relation to Apple is neither here nor there. What is indisputable is that Apple, somehow, have triggered a wave of profound change several times in the last few years resulting from products they have released. And these products were released into markets where previously Apple were not present all.

People get too wrapped up in "innovation". In the end, it really doesn't matter that much.

Execution is the key.

Beta predated VHS and was technically superior, but VHS executed better. The rest is history.

Windows OS executed better than Mac OS. And that's why 93% of the worlds desktops run a MS OS.

With regards to MP3 players, Apple was far from the first, but they executed better. Whether anyone wants to claim that's because technical reasons, the scroll wheel, iTunes, or even just because of trendy association and marketing, no one can deny the popularity of the device.

Similarly with the iPhone. Apple hit with the right product at the right time.

Personally, I don't believe Apple has innovated much, but it doesn't really matter in the end.

But keep in mind that argument goes both ways. Samsung has begun to steal much of Apple's thunder by out "Apple'ing" them.